Name That Author Contest--Day Three!

As the time to celebrate Immanuel draws closer, we pray your hearts of full of wondrous anticipation. God is with us!

We are very, very grateful for all you add to the Novel Matters blog. The conversations we've had here have deepened our faith and set our resolves to craft beautiful fiction. It's time to celebrate that relationship with a contest.

If you've been with us since Monday, you know how this works. If not, read on. You still have plenty of chances to add your name to the drawings. All you need to know about contest rules, prizes, and that excerpt you've been waiting for can be found here:

All six of us have works in progress no one has read, except for a select few and certainly our mothers. You've been reading our posts for three years now, so we figure you must be getting familiar with our voices. How about our fictional voices?

Here's how the contest works: On our regular post days (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) for the next two weeks, we'll be posting a short excerpt from a work in progress, anonymously. That's right, your job is to guess which one of us wrote the passage, just from the sound of our voices. Give us your guess in the comments section. If you guess correctly, your name will be added to the prize drawing.

And what is the wonderful prize? Katy's husband, George, is a gifted sculptor. He has donated a $50 gift certificate toward one of his sculptures. You can see his work here. We can't promise the sculpture will be at your house for Christmas. That would have required much more forethought than six artist types could muster, but we can promise that you'll love George's work. Second and third places will win a hard copy of our cookbook, Novel Tips on Rice: What to Cook When You'd Rather be Writing.

Here are the rules:

1. One guess per post day. (You may play all six days. That's six chances to win a sculpture!)

2. Guesses will be accepted until 9:00 PM Pacific Time the day of the post.

3. Each correct guess wins you one chance in the drawing.

4. The winner will be announced on December 17, 2011.

Here is the third excerpt:

After Mother’s funeral I sat on her bed, fingered the peaks and valleys of her chenille spread and plumped her pillow to lean against the headboard. This was her world. A globe. A jelly glass of sharpened pencils. Bottles and bottles of pills. A tattered tower of crossword puzzles and a dictionary with a broken spine. A tub of Ponds Beauty Cream. Three library books, one with a bookmark only pages from the end. A picture of Papa, me, and the twins. And a Bible swollen with use.

I touched all of these things—balanced a pencil on my finger, smeared cream over my face, spun the globe to run my finger along its worn equator. The Bible crinkled when I picked it up. I fanned the pages to release the smell of ink and old leather. A photograph fell into my lap.

And there she was, my mother, a teenager standing self-consciously in front of an old car. One hand covered her mouth to hide the gap in her teeth, something she’d done even as an adult, but her eyes were smiling. She wasn’t alone in the picture. A small girl, much younger and as fair as butter, hugged Mother’s waist. The little girl’s head tilted back as she laughed. They were salt and pepper, light and dark.

Who is she?

Who is she, indeed? The author, I mean. Who is she? Give your guess in the comments section for a chance to win $50 toward one of George Popa's beautiful sculptures or a cookbook.